Domnus II, bp. of Antioch, a friend of Theodoret. He was nephew of John, bp. of Antioch, brought up under Euthymius the famous anchoret of Palestine. He was ordained deacon by Juvenal of Jerusalem on his visit to the Laura of Euthymus in A.D. 429.

Two years afterwards, learning that his uncle the bp. of Antioch had become entangled in the Nestorian heresy, he besought Euthymius to allow him to go and extricate him. Euthymius counselled him to remain where he was, telling him that God could take care of his uncle without him; that solitude was safer for him than the world; that his design would not turn out to his ultimate advantage; that he might not improbably succeed to his uncle's dignity, but would become the victim of clever and unprincipled men, who would avail themselves of his simplicity, and then accomplish his ruin; but the old man's counsels were thrown away.

Domnus left the Laura without even saying farewell to Euthymius. He obtained such popularity at Antioch that on the death of his uncle, A.D. 441, he was appointed his successor, and at once ranked as the chief bishop of the Eastern world.

In 445 he summoned a synod of Syrian bishops which confirmed the deposition of Athanasius of Perrha. In 447 he consecrated Irenaeus to the see of Tyre; but Theodosius II, having commanded that the appointment should be annulled, Irenaeus being both a digamus and a favourer of the Nestorian heresy, Domnus, despite Theodoret's remonstrances, yielded to the imperial wil.

Ibas, bp. of Edessa, being charged with promulgating Nestorian doctrines, Domnus summoned a council at Antioch (A.D. 448) which decided in favour of Ibas and deposed his accusers. Domnus's sentence, though revoked by Flavian, bp. of Constantinople, was confirmed by three episcopal commissioners to whom he and the emperor Theodosius had committed the matter.

Domnus was one of the earliest impeachers of the orthodoxy of Eutyches, in a synodical letter to Theodosius, c. 447. At the Latrocinium, held at Ephesus, Aug. 8, 449, on this matter, Domnus, in virtue of an imperial rescript, found himself deprived of his presidential seat, which was occupied by Dioscorus, while precedence over the patriarch of Antioch was given to Juvenal of Jerusalem. Cowed by the dictatorial spirit of Dioscorus, and unnerved by the violence of Barsumas and his monks, Domnus revoked his former condemnation of Eutyches, and voted for his restoration and for the condemnation of Flavian. Domnus was, nevertheless, deposed and banished by Dioscorus. The charges against him were, approval of a Nestorian sermon preached before him at Antioch by Theodoret on the death of Cyril, and some expressions in letters written by him to Dioscorus condemning the perplexed and obscure character of Cyril's anathemas. He was the only bishop then deposed and banished who was not reinstated after the council of Chalcedon. At that council Maximus, his successor in the see of Antioch, obtained permission to assign Domnus a pension from the revenues of the church. Finally, on his recall from exile Domnus returned to the monastic home of his youth, and ended his days in the Laura of St. Euthymius, where in 452, according to Theophanes, he afforded a refuge to Juvenal of Jerusalem when driven from his see.

 

 

 

Juvenalis succeeded Praylius as bp. of Jerusalem c. 420. The ruling object of his episcopate was the elevation of the see of Jerusalem from the subordinate position it held in accordance with the seventh of the canons of Nicaea, as suffragan to the metropolitan see of Caesarea, to a primary place in the episcopate. Juvenal coveted not merely metropolitan, but patriarchal rank, and in defiance of all canonical authority claimed jurisdiction over the great see of Antioch, from which he sought to remove Arabia and the two Phoenicias to his own province.

Scarcely had he been consecrated bp. of Jerusalem when he proceeded to assert his claims to the metropolitan rank by his acts. A letter of remonstrance against the proceedings of the council of Ephesus, sent to Theodosius by the Oriental party, complains that Juvenal had ordained in provinces over which he had no jurisdiction. Cyril of Alexandria wrote to Leo, then archdeacon of Rome, informing him of this and begging that his unlawful attempts might have no sanction from the apostolic see. Juvenal, however, was far too useful an ally against Nestorius for Cyril lightly to discard. When the council met at Ephesus, Juvenal was allowed to take precedence of his metropolitan of Caesarea and to occupy the position of vice-president of the council, coming next after Cyril himself, and was regarded in all respects as the second prelate in the assembly.

The arrogant assertion of his supremacy over the bp. of Antioch, and his claim to take rank next after Rome as an apostolical see, provoked no open remonstrance. At the "Latrocinium" Juvenal occupied the third place, after Dioscorus and the papal legate, by the special order of Theodosius. When the council of Chalcedon met, one of the matters before it was the dispute as to priority between Juvenal and Maximus, bp. of Antioch. The contention ended in a compromise agreed on in the Seventh Action. Juvenal surrendered his claim to the two Phoenicias and to Arabia, on condition of being allowed metropolitical jurisdiction over the three Palestines. The claim to patriarchal authority over the bp. of Antioch put forward at Ephesus was discreetly dropped.

The terms arranged between Maximus and Juvenal received the consent of the assembled bishops. Maximus, however, soon repented his too ready acquiescence in Juvenal's demands, and wrote a letter of complaint to pope Leo, who, replying June 11, 453 upheld the authority of the Nicene canons, and promised to do all he could to maintain the ancient dignity of the see of Antioch. No further action, however, seems to have been taken either by Leo or by Maximus. Juvenal was left master of the situation, and the church of Jerusalem from that epoch has peaceably enjoyed the patriarchal dignity.

On the opening of the council at Ephesus, June 22, 431, Juvenal took a prominent part in the condemnation of Nestorius. As one of the eight legates deputed by the council, he aided in the consecration of Maximian in Nestorius's room, Oct. 25, 431. In retaliation, John of Antioch and the Orientals on their way back from Ephesus held a synod at Tarsus, which excommunicated Cyril and the deputies of the council, Juvenal at their head.

When, in 449, the "Latrocinium" met at Ephesus, Juvenal was the first to sign the instrument of Flavian's deposition. The natural consequence of this open patronage of heresy was that the name of Juvenal, together with those of Dioscorus and the other bishops of the "Latrocinium," was removed from the diptychs of Rome and other orthodox churches. This alarmed Juvenal, and he faced completely round at Chalcedon in 451, denouncing the doctrines he had supported two years before at Ephesus. The place he occupied in the council indicated that he had been compelled to abate somewhat of his overweening pretensions. Anatolius of Constantinople and Maximus of Antioch both took precedence of him, as did the Roman legates and Dioscorus.

The proceedings had not advanced far when Juvenal, seeing the course events were taking, rose up with the bishops of Palestine in his train, and crossed over from the right, where he had been sitting with the Alexandrine prelates, to the Orientals on the left amid shouts of "Welcome, orthodox one! It is God Who has brought thee over here". This desertion of his old friends barely saved him. Evidence being read as to the violence with which Flavian's condemnation had been enforced, and the brutality with which he had been treated, the imperial commissioners proposed Juvenal's deposition, together with that of Dioscorus, Eusebius, and the others who had taken a leading part in these disgraceful transactions. Juvenal evidently felt that consistency must now be sacrificed to the maintenance of his position, and having given his vote and signature to the deposition of Dioscorus and signed the tome of Leo, the objections of the commissioners were overruled. Juvenal and his four companions were allowed to resume their seats, amid a shout of welcome, "This is the Lord's doing". "Many years to the orthodox! This is the peace of the churches". He subsequently took part in drawing up the declaration of faith and signed the letter sent to Leo.

We have a Latin translation of a synodical letter written in his own name and that of the bishops of Palestine, A.D. 453, to the archimandrites, presbyters, and monks of the province confirming the decrees of Chalcedon. His enjoyment of his newly acquired dignity was speedily disturbed. The decrees of Chalcedon were not at all acceptable to a large number of the archimandrites and monks of Palestine, who generally held Eutychian views, and they, in 452, addressed letters to Marcian and to Pulcheria against the conduct of their bishop. The emperor and empress administered severe rebukes to the remonstrants. The imperial displeasure, however, failed to repress the turbulence of the malcontents, and under the leadership of Theodosius, a fanatical Monophysite monk, patronized by the empress-dowager Eudocia, who had made Jerusalem her home, they threw the whole province into confusion. Juvenal's life was threatened. The walls and gates were guarded to prevent his escape. But he concealed himself, and together with Domnus made his way to the desert, whence he fled to Constantinople and laid his complaints against Theodosius and his partisans before the emperor.

Marcian took decided measures to restore order. After holding possession for two years, Theodosius was expelled from Jerusalem, 453, and Juvenal was restored. Eudocia returned to Jerusalem, and renewed communion with Juvenal, her example proving influential to bring back the large majority both of monks and laity to the cathedral church.

One of Juvenal's first acts on his restoration was to hold a council which issued a synodical letter to the two Palestines, declaring the perfect orthodoxy of the decrees of Chalcedon and denying that anything had there been altered in, or added to, the Nicene faith. Mutual ill-will and suspicion still embittered the relations of Juvenal to his province, and Evagrius complains of the evils which had followed his return) offered congratulations on his restoration, but told him plainly that he had brought his troubles on himself by his condemnation of Flavian and admission of the errors of Eutyches, and that having favoured heretics he cannot now blame them. Leo expressed his satisfaction that he had come to a better mind, and advised him to study his tome to confirm him in the faith.

In 457 Leo addressed Juvenal among the metropolitans of the East, with reference to the troubles at Alexandria, urging him to defend the faith as declared at Chalcedon. The statement of Basil of Seleucia that Juvenal first "began to celebrate the glorious and adorable salvation-bringing nativity of the Lord" must be interpreted to mean that he separated the celebration of the Nativity and the Epiphany, which, till then, had been kept on the same day, Jan. 6. We may gather from a letter professing to be addressed by the bp. of Jerusalem to the bp. of Rome that this change was in accordance with the Western practice. Basil of Seleucia, being a contemporary of Juvenal and associated with him in his public acts, may be regarded as trustworthy evidence for the fact. According to Basil, Juvenal built a basilica in honour of St. Stephen on the site of his martyrdom, for which the empress Eudocia furnished the funds. The death of Juvenal probably occurred in 458. He was succeeded by Anastasius.

 

 

DIOSCORUS OF ALEXANDRIA

 

Dioscorus, patriarch of Alexandria, succeeded Cyril about midsummer 444, receiving consecration, according to one report, from two bishops only. He had served as Cyril's archdeacon. Liberatus says that he had never been married. It is difficult to harmonize the accounts of his character. Theodoret, whose testimony in his favour cannot be suspected, declared in a letter to Dioscorus, soon after his consecration, that the fame of his virtues, and particularly of his modesty and humility, was widely spread; on the other hand, after he had involved himself in the Monophysite heresy, he was accused of having gravely misconducted himself in the first years of his episcopate.

According to a deacon, Ischyrion, Dioscorus had laid waste property, inflicted fines and exile, bought up and sold at a high price the wheat sent by the government to Libya, appropriated and grossly misspent money left by a lady named Peristeria for religious and charitable purposes, received women of notorious character into his house, persecuted Ischyrion as a favourite of Cyril's, ruined the little estate which was his only support, sent a "phalanx of ecclesiastics, or rather of ruffians," to put him to death, and, after his escape, again sought to murder him in a hospital; in proof, Ischyrion appealed to six persons, one of whom
was bath-keeper to Dioscorus.

According to a priest named Athanasius, Cyril's nephew, Dioscorus, from the outset of his episcopate ("which he obtained one knows not how," says the petitioner), harassed him and his brother by using influence with the court, so that the brother died of distress, and Athanasius, with his aunts, sister-in-law, and nephews, were bereft of their homes by the patriarch's malignity. He himself was deposed, without any trial, from the priesthood, and became, perforce, a wanderer for years. According to a layman named Sophronius, Dioscorus hindered the execution of an imperial order which Sophronius had obtained for the redress of a grievous wrong. "The country," he said, "belonged to him rather than to the sovereigns".

Sophronius averred that legal evidence was forthcoming to prove that Dioscorus had usurped, in Egypt, the authority belonging to the emperor. He added that Dioscorus had taken away his clothes and property, and compelled him to flee for his life; and he charged him, further, with adultery and blasphemy.

Such accusations were then so readily made—as the life of St. Athanasius himself shows—that some deduction must be made from charges brought against Dioscorus in the hour of his adversity; and wrongs done by his agents may have been in some cases unfairly called his acts. Still, it is but too likely that there was sufficient truth in them to demonstrate the evil effects on his character of elevation to a post of almost absolute power; for such, in those days, was the great "evangelical throne". We find him, before the end of his first year, in correspondence with pope Leo the Great, who gave directions, as from the see of St. Peter, to the new successor of St. Mark; writing, on June 21, 445, that "it would be shocking to believe that St. Mark formed his rules for Alexandria otherwise than on the Petrine model" (Ep. 11).

In 447 Dioscorus appears among those who expressed suspicion of the theological character of Theodoret, who had been much mixed up with the party of Nestorius. It was rumoured that, preaching at Antioch, he had practically taught Nestorianism; and Dioscorus, hearing this, wrote to Domnus, bp. of Antioch, Theodoret's patriarch; whereupon Theodoret wrote a denial (Ep. 83) ending with an anathema against all who should deny the holy Virgin to be Theotokos, call Jesus a mere man, or divide the one Son into two. Dioscorus still assumed the truth of the charge (Theod. Ep. 86), allowed Theodoret to be anathematized in church, and even rose from his throne to echo the malediction, and sent some bishops to Constantinople to support him against Theodoret.

Then, in Nov. 448, the aged EUTYCHES, archimandrite of Constantinople and a vehement enemy of Nestorianizers, was accused by Eusebius, bp. of Dorylaeum, before a council of which Flavian was president, with an opposite error. He clung tenaciously to the phrase, "one incarnate nature of God the Word," which Cyril had used on the authority of St. Athanasius; but neglected the qualifications and explanations by which Cyril had guarded his meaning. Thus, by refusing to admit that Christ, as incarnate, had "two natures," Eutyches appeared to his judges to have revived, in effect, the Apollinarian heresy—to have denied the distinctness and verity of Christ's manhood; and he was deprived of his priestly office, and excommunicated. His patron, the chamberlain Chrysaphius, applied to Dioscorus for aid, promising to support him in all his designs if he would take up the cause of Eutyches against Flavian. Eutyches himself wrote to Dioscorus, asking him "to examine his cause", and Dioscorus, zealous against all anti-Cyrilline tendencies in theology, wrote to the emperor, urging him to call a general council to review Flavian's judgment. Theodosius, influenced by his wife and his chamberlain, issued letters (Mar. 30, 449), ordering the chief prelates (patriarchs, as we may call them, and exarchs) to repair, with some of their bishops, to Ephesus by Aug. 1, 449.

This council of evil memory—on which Leo afterwards fastened the name of "Latrocinium", or gang of robbers—met on Aug. 8, 449, in St. Mary's church at Ephesus, the scene of the third general council's meeting in 431; 150 bishops being present. Dioscorus presided, and next to him Julian, or Julius, the representative of the "most holy bishop of the Roman church," then Juvenal of Jerusalem, Domnus of Antioch, and—his lowered position indicating what was to come—Flavian of Constantinople. The archbp. of Alexandria shewed himself a partisan throughout. He did indeed propose the acceptance of Leo's letter to the council, a letter written at the same time as, and expressly referring to, the famous "Tome"; but it was only handed in, not read, Juvenal moving that another imperial letter should be read and recorded. The president then intimated that the council's business was not to frame a new doctrinal formulary, but to inquire whether what had lately appeared—meaning, the statements of Flavian and bp. Eusebius on the one hand, those of Eutyches on the other—were accordant with the decisions of the councils of Nicaea and Ephesus—"two councils in name," said he, "but one in faith".

Eutyches was then introduced, and made his statement, beginning, "I commend myself to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, and the true verdict of your justice." After he had finished his address, Flavian desired that Eusebius, who had been his accuser, should be called in and heard. Elpidius, the imperial commissioner, vetoed this proposal on the ground that the judges of Eutyches were now to be judged, and that his accuser had already fulfilled his task, "and, as he thought, successfully": to let him speak now would be a cause of mere disturbance. This unjudicial view of the case was supported by Dioscorus. Flavian was baffled, and the council resolved to hear the acts of the synod of Constantinople which had condemned Eutyches. The episcopal deputy of Leo, with his companion the deacon Hilarus, urged that "the pope's letter" (probably including the "Tome" in this proposal) should be read first, but this was overruled; Dioscorus moved that the "acts" should be first read, and then the letter of the bp. of Rome. The reading began.

When the passage was reached in which Basil of Seleucia and Seleucus of Amasia had said that the one Christ was in two natures after the incarnation, a storm of wrath broke out. "Let no one call the Lord 'two' after the union! Do not divide the undivided! Seleucus was not bp. of Amasia! This is Nestorianism."

"Be quiet for a little," said Dioscorus; "let us hear some more blasphemies. Why are we to blame Nestorius only? There are many Nestoriuses".

The reading proceeded as far as Eusebius's question to Eutyches, "Do you own two natures after the incarnation?" Then arose another storm: "The holy synod exclaimed, 'Away with Eusebius, burn him, let him be burnt alive! Let him be cut in two—be divided, even as he divided!'"

"Can you endure," asked Dioscorus, "to hear of two natures after the incarnation?"

"Anathema to him that says it!" was the reply.

"I have need of your voices and your hands too," rejoined Dioscorus; "if any one cannot shout, let him stretch out his hand."

Another anathema rang out. Another passage, containing a statement of belief by Eutyches, was heard with applause. "We accept this statement," said Dioscorus. "This is the faith of the Fathers," exclaimed the bishops. "of what faith do you say this?" asked Dioscorus, "of Eutyches's: for Eusebius is impious".

Similar approbation was given to another passage containing the characteristic formula of Eutychianism: "I confess that our Lord was of two natures before the incarnation; but after the incarnation [i.e. in Him as incarnate] I confess one nature."

"We all agree to this," said Dioscorus.

"We agree," said the council. Presently came a sentence in which Basil of Seleucia had denounced the denial of two natures after the incarnation as equivalent to the assertion of a commixture and a fusion. This aroused once more the zealots of the Alexandrian party; one bishop sprang forward, shouting, "This upsets the whole church!"

The Egyptians and the monks, led by Barsumas, cried out, "Cut him in two, who says two natures! He is a Nestorian!"

Basil's nerves gave way; he lost, as he afterwards said, his perceptions, bodily and mental. He began to say that he did not remember whether he had uttered the obnoxious words, but that he had meant to say, "If you do not add the word 'incarnate' to 'nature,' as Cyril did, the phrase 'one nature' implies a fusion."

Juvenal asked whether his words had been wrongly reported; he answered helplessly, "I do not recollect". He seems to have been coerced into a formal retractation of the phrase "two natures"; but he added "hypostases" as explanatory of "natures," and professed to "adore the one nature of the Godhead of the Only-begotten, who was made man and incarnate".

Eutyches declared that the acts of the Constantinopolitan synod had been tampered with.

"It is false," said Flavian.

"If Flavian," said Dioscorus, "knows anything which supports his opinion, let him put it in writing . . . No one hinders you, and the council knows it."

Flavian then said that the acts had been scrutinized, and no falsification had been found in them; that, for himself, he had always glorified God by holding what he then held. Dioscorus called on the bishops to give their verdict as to the theological statements of Eutyches. They acquitted him of all unsoundness, as
faithful to Nicene and Ephesian teaching.

Domnus expressed regret for having mistakenly condemned him. Basil of Seleucia spoke like the rest. Flavian, of course, was silent. Dioscorus spoke last, affirming the judgments of the council, and "adding his own opinion."

Eutyches was "restored" to his presbyterial rank and his abbatial dignity. His monks were then released from the excommunication incurred at Constantinople. The doctrinal decisions of the Ephesian council of 431, in its first and sixth sessions, were then read. Dioscorus proposed that these decisions, with those of Nicaea, should be recognized as an unalterable standard of orthodoxy; that whoever should say or think otherwise, or should unsettle them, should be put under censure.

"Let each one of you speak his mind on this". Several bishops assented. Hilarus, the Roman deacon, testified that the apostolic see reverenced those decisions, and that its letter, if read, would prove this. Dioscorus called in some secretaries, who brought forward a draft sentence of deposition against Flavian and Eusebius, on the ground that the Ephesian council had enacted severe penalties against any who should frame or propose any other creed than the Nicene. Flavian and Eusebius were declared to have constructively committed this offence by "unsettling almost everything, and causing scandal and confusion throughout the churches." Their deposition was decided upon. Onesiphorus, bp. of Iconium, with some others, went up to Dioscorus, clasped his feet and knees, and passionately entreated him not to go to such extremities.

"He has done nothing worthy of deposition ... if he deserves condemnation, let him be condemned".

"It must be," said Dioscorus in answer; "if my tongue were to be cut out for it, I would still say so".

They persisted, and he, starting from his throne, stood up on the footstool and exclaimed, "Are you getting up a sedition? Where are the counts?" Military officers, soldiers with swords and sticks, even the proconsul with chains, entered at his call. He peremptorily commanded the bishops to sign the sentence, and with a fierce gesture of the hand exclaimed, "He that does not choose to sign must reckon with me." A scene of terrorism followed. Those prelates who were reluctant to take part in the deposition were threatened with exile, beaten by the soldiers, denounced as heretics by the partisans of Dioscorus, and by the crowd of fanatical monks who accompanied Barsumas, until they put their names to a blank paper on which the sentence was to be written.

They afterwards protested that they had signed under compulsion. Basil of Seleucia declared that he had given way because he was "given over to the judgment of 120 or 130 bishops; had he been dealing with magistrates, he would have suffered martyrdom". "The Egyptians," says Tillemont, "who signed willingly enough, did so after the others had been made to sign".

Flavian's own fate was the special tragedy of the Latrocinium. He had lodged in the hands of the Roman delegates a formal appeal to the pope and the Western bishops. It was nearly his last act. He was brutally treated, kicked, and beaten by the agents of Dioscorus, and even, we are told, by Dioscorus himself. He was then imprisoned, and soon exiled, but died in the hands of his guards, from the effect of his injuries, three days after his deposition, Aug. 11, 449 He was regarded as a martyr for the doctrine of "the two natures in the one person" of Christ.

Anatolius, who had been the agent (apocrisiarius) of Dioscorus at Constantinople, was appointed his successor. Dioscorus and his council—as we may well call it—proceeded to depose Theodoret and several other bishops; "many," says Leo, "were expelled from their sees, and banished, because they would
not accept heresy". Theodoret was put under a special ban. "They ordered me," he writes, "to be excluded from shelter, from water, from everything."

Confusion now pervaded the Eastern churches. It was impossible to acquiesce in the proceedings of the "Latrocinium." Leo bestirred himself to get a new oecumenical council held in Italy: the imperial family in the West supported this, but Theodosius II persisted in upholding the late council. In the spring of 450 Dioscorus took a new and exceptionally audacious step. At Nicaea, on his way to the court, he caused ten bishops whom he had brought from Egypt to sign a document excommunicating pope Leo, doubtless on the ground that Leo was endeavouring to quash the canonical decisions of a legitimate council. His cause, however, was ruined when the orthodox Pulcheria succeeded to the empire, and gave her hand to Marcian, this event leading to a new council at Chalcedon on Oct. 8, 451, which Dioscorus attended. The deputies of Leo come first, then Anatolius, Dioscorus, Maximus, Juvenal. At first Dioscorus sat among those bishops who were on the right of the chancel. The Roman deputies on the opposite side desired, in the name of Leo, that Dioscorus should not sit in the council. The magistrates, who acted as imperial commissioners (and were the effective presidents), asked what was charged against him? Paschasinus, the chief Roman delegate, answered, "When he comes in" (i.e. after having first gone out) "it will be necessary to state objections against him."

The magistrates desired again to hear the charge. Lucentius, another delegate, said, "He has presumed to hold a synod without leave of the apostolic see, which has never been done." (Rome did not recognize the "second general council" of 381; which, in fact, was not then owned as general.)

"We cannot," said Paschasinus, "transgress the apostolic pope's orders."

"We cannot," added Lucentius, "allow such a wrong as that this man should sit in the council, who is come to be judged."

"If you claim to judge," replied the magistrates sharply, "do not be accuser too."

They bade Dioscorus sit in the middle by himself, and the Roman deputies sat down and said no more. Eusebius of Dorylaeum asked to be heard against Dioscorus. "I have been injured by him; the faith has been injured; Flavian was killed, after he and I had been unjustly deposed by Dioscorus. Command my petition to the emperors to be read." It was read by Beronicianus, the secretary of the imperial consistory, and stated that "at the recent council at Ephesus, this good Dioscorus, disregarding justice, and supporting Eutyches in heresy—having also gained power by bribes, and assembled a disorderly multitude—did all he could to ruin the Catholic faith, and to establish the heresy of Eutyches, and condemned us: I desire, therefore, that he be called to account, and that the records of his proceedings against us be examined." Dioscorus, preserving his self-possession, answered, "The synod was held by the emperor's order; I too desire that its acts against Flavian may be read"; but added, "I beg that the doctrinal question be first considered."

"No," said the magistrates, "the charge against you must first be met; wait until the acts have been read, as you yourself desired."

The letter of Theodosius, convoking the late council, was read. The magistrates then ordered that THEODORET should be brought in, because Leo had "restored to him his episcopate," and the emperor had ordered him to attend the council. He entered accordingly. The Egyptians and some other bishops shouted,

"Turn out the teacher of Nestorius!" Others rejoined, "We signed a blank paper; we were beaten, and so made to sign. Turn out the enemies of Flavian and of the faith!"

"Why," asked Dioscorus, "should Cyril be ejected?" (i.e. virtually, by the admission of Theodoret). His adversaries turned fiercely upon him: "Turn out Dioscorus the homicide!" Ultimately the magistrates ruled that Theodoret should sit down, but in the middle of the assembly, and that his admission should not prejudice any charge against him.

The reading went on; at the letter giving Dioscorus the presidency, he remarked that Juvenal, and Thalassius of Caesarea, were associated with him, that the synod had gone with him, and that Theodosius had confirmed its decrees. Forthwith, a cry arose from the bishops whom he had intimidated at Ephesus. "Not one of us signed voluntarily. We were overawed by soldiers." Dioscorus coolly said that if the bishops had not understood the merits of the case, they ought not to have signed. The reading was resumed. Flavian being named, his friends asked why he had been degraded to the fifth place? The next interruption was in reference to the suppression, at the Latrocinium, of Leo's letter. Aetius, archdeacon of Constantinople, said it had not even been "received."

"But," said Dioscorus, "the acts shew that I proposed that it should be read. Let others say why it was not read."

"What others?"

"Juvenal and Thalassius."

Juvenal, on being questioned, said, "The chief notary told us that he had an imperial letter; I answered that it ought to come first; no one afterwards said that he had in his hands a letter from Leo".

Thalassius (evidently a weak man, though holding the great see of St. Basil) said that he had not power, of himself, to order the reading of the letter. At another point the "Orientals," the opponents of Dioscorus, objected that the acts of Ephesus misrepresented their words.

Dioscorus replied, "Each bishop had his own secretaries ... taking down the speeches."

Stephen of Ephesus then narrated the violence done to his secretaries: Acacias of Arianathia described the coercion scene.

When the reader came to Dioscorus's words, "I examine the decrees of the Fathers" (councils), Eusebius said, "See, he said, 'I examine'; and I do the same."

Dioscorus caught him up: "I said 'examine,' not 'innovate.' Our Saviour bade us examine the Scriptures; that is not innovating."

"He said, Seek, and ye shall find," retorted Eusebius.

One bishop objected to the record of "Guardian of the faith" as an acclamation in honour of Dioscorus, "No one said that"

"They want to deny all that is confessed to be the fact," said Dioscorus; "let them next say they were not there."

At the words of Eutyches, "I have observed the definitions of the council," i.e. the Ephesian decree against adding to the Nicene faith, Eusebius broke in, "He lied! There is no such definition, no canon prescribing this." "There are four copies," said Dioscorus calmly, "which contain it. What bishops have defined, is it not a definition? It is not a canon: a canon is a different thing." The bp. of Cyzicus referred to the additions made in the council of 381 to the original Nicene creed (e.g. "of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary"). The Egyptians disclaimed all such additions. (Cyril, in fact, had never acknowledged that revised version of the Nicene formulary.) There was some further criticism of the profession of faith made by Eutyches; whereupon Dioscorus said, "If Eutyches has any heterodox opinion, he deserves not only to be punished, but to be burnt! My only object is to preserve the Catholic faith, not that of any man. I look to God, and not to any individual; I care for nothing but my own soul and the right faith"

. Basil of Seleucia described what had taken place as regarded his own statements. "If you taught in such a Catholic tone," said the magistrates, "why did you sign the deposition of Flavian?" Basil pleaded the compulsory authority of a council of bishops.

"On your own showing," said Dioscorus, "you betrayed the faith for fear of men."

Others who had given way with Basil cried, "We all sinned; we all ask pardon."

"But," said the magistrates, "you said at first that you had been forced to sign a blank paper."

The "peccavimus" was reiterated. When the reader came to the failure of Flavian's attempt to get Eusebius a hearing, Dioscorus threw the responsibility on Elpidius; so did Juvenal. Thalassius only said, "It was not my doing."

"Such a defence," said the magistrates, "is no defence when the faith is concerned."

"If," said Dioscorus, "you blame me for obeying Elpidius, were no rules broken when Theodoret was brought in?"

"He came in as accuser."

"Why then does he now sit in the rank of a bishop?"

"He and Eusebius sit as accusers," was the answer; "and you sit as accused".

Afterwards the magistrates recurred to this topic: "Eusebius, at Constantinople, when accusing Eutyches, himself asked that Eutyches should be present. Why was not a like course taken at Ephesus?"

No one answered. Cyril's letter to John of Antioch, "Laetentur coeli," was read as part of the acts of Ephesus. Theodoret, by way of clearing himself, anathematized the assertion of "two Sons." All
the bishops—so the acts of Chalcedon say expressly—cried out, "We believe as did Cyril; we did so believe, and we do. Anathema to whoever does not so believe."

The opponents of Dioscorus then claimed Flavian as in fact of one mind with Cyril, as clear of Nestorianism. The "Easterns" added, "Leo believes so, Anatolius believes so." There was universal protestation of agreement with Cyril, including even the magistrates, who answered, as it were, for Marcian and Pulcheria. Then came a fierce outcry against Dioscorus. "out with the murderer of Flavian—the parricide!"

The magistrates asked, "Why did you receive to communion Eutyches, who holds the opposite to this belief? Why condemn Flavian and Eusebius who agree with it?"

"The records," answered Dioscorus, "will show the truth."

Presently, in regard to some words of Eustathius of Berytus, adopting Cyril's phrase, "one incarnate nature," as Athanasian, the Easterns cried, "Eutyches thinks thus, so does Dioscorus."

Dioscorus showed that he was careful to disclaim, even with anathema, all notions of a "confusion, or commixture," of Godhead and manhood in Christ. The magistrates asked whether the canonical letters of Cyril, recently read (i.e. his second letter to Nestorius, and his letter to John, not including the third letter to Nestorius, to which the 12 anathemas were annexed) bore out the language as cited from Eustathius. Eustathius held up the book from which he had taken Cyril's language.

"If I spoke amiss, here is the manuscript: let it be anathematized with me!" He repeated Cyril's letter to Acacius by heart, and then explained: "One nature" did not exclude the flesh of Christ, which was co-essential with us; and "two natures" was a heterodox phrase if (i.e. only if) it was used for a "division" of His person".

Why then did you depose Flavian?"

"I erred".

Flavian's own statement, that Christ was of two natures after the incarnation, in one hypostasis and one person, etc., was then considered; several bishops, in turn, approved of it, including Paschasinus, Anatolius, Maximus, Thalassius, Eustathius. The Easterns called "archbp. Flavian" a martyr".

Let his next words be read," said Dioscorus; "you will find that he is inconsistent with himself."

Juvenal, who had been sitting on the right, now went over to the left, and the Easterns welcomed him. Peter of Corinth, a young bishop, did the same, owning that Flavian held with Cyril; the Easterns exclaimed, "Peter thinks as does" (St.) "Peter." Other bishops spoke similarly. Dioscorus, still undaunted, said, "The reason why Flavian was condemned was plainly this, that he asserted two natures after the incarnation. I have passages from the Fathers, Athanasius, Gregory, Cyril, to the effect that after the incarnation there were not two natures, but one incarnate nature of the Word. If I am to be expelled, the Fathers will be expelled with me. I am defending their doctrine; I do not deviate from them at all; I have not got these extracts carelessly, I have verified them".

After more reading, he said, "I accept the phrase 'of two natures,' but I do not accept 'two' (i.e. he would not say, "Christ
has now two natures"). I am obliged to speak boldly; I am speaking for my own soul."

"Was Flavian," asked Paschasinus, "allowed such freedom of speech as this man takes?"

"No," said the magistrates significantly; "but then this council is being carried on with justice".

Some time later the Easterns denied that the whole council at Ephesus had assented to Eutyches's language; it was the language of "that Pharaoh, Dioscorus the homicide." Eustathius, wishing, he said, to promote a good understanding, asked whether "two natures" meant "two divided natures."

"No," said Basil, "neither divided nor confused". Basil afterwards, with Onesiphorus, described the coercion used as to the signatures.

The reading went on until it was necessary to light the candles. At last they came to the signatures; then the magistrates proposed that as the deposition had been proved unjust, Dioscorus, Juvenal, Thalassius, Eusebius of Ancyra, Eustathius, and Basil, as leaders in the late synod, should be deposed; but this, it appears, was a provisional sentence, to be further considered by the council. It was received with applause: "A just sentence! Christ has deposed Dioscorus! God has vindicated the martyrs!"

The magistrates desired that each bishop should give in a carefully framed statement of belief conformable to the Nicene "exposition," to that of the 150 Fathers (of Constantinople, in 381), to the canonical epistles and expositions of the Fathers, Gregory, Basil, Athanasius, Hilary, Ambrose, and Cyril's two canonical epistles published and confirmed in the first Ephesian council, adding that Leo had written a letter to Flavian against Eutyches. So ended the first session.

The second session was held Oct. 10; Dioscorus was absent. After some discussion as to making an exposition of faith, which led to the reading of the creed in its two forms—both of which were accepted—and of Cyril's "two canonical epistles," and of Leo's letter to Flavian (the Tome), which was greeted with "Peter has spoken by Leo; Cyril taught thus; Leo and Cyril have taught alike," but to parts of which some objection was taken by one bishop, and time given for consideration, the usual exclamations were made, among which we find that of the Illyrians, "Restore Dioscorus to the synod, to the churches! We have all offended, let all be forgiven!" while the enemies of Dioscorus called for his banishment, and the clerics of Constantinople said that he who communicated with him was a Jew.

In the third session, Sat. Oct. 13, the magistrates not being present, a memorial to the council from Eusebius of Dorylaeum, setting forth charges against Dioscorus, was read. It then appeared that Dioscorus had been summoned, like other bishops, to the session, and intimated his willingness to come; but his guards prevented him. Two priests, sent to search for him, could not find him in the precincts of the church. Three bishops, sent with a notary, found him, and said, "The holy council begs your Holiness to attend its meeting."

"I am under guard," said he; "I am hindered by the officers" (magistriani, the subordinates of the "master of the offices," or "supreme magistrate of the palace); and, after two other summonses, positively and finally refused to come. He had nothing more to say than he had said to former envoys. They begged him to reconsider it.

"If your Holiness knows that you are falsely accused, the council is not far off; do take the trouble to come and refute the falsehood."

"What I have said, I have said; it is enough."

They desisted, and reported their failure. "Do you order that we proceed to ecclesiastical penalties against him?" asked Paschasinus, addressing the council.

"Yes, we agree."

One bishop said bitterly, "When he murdered holy Flavian, he did not adduce canons, nor proceed by church forms."

The Roman delegates proposed a sentence, to this effect: "Dioscorus has received Eutyches, though duly condemned by Flavian, into communion. The apostolic see excuses those who were coerced by Dioscorus at Ephesus, but who are obedient to archbp. Leo" (as president) "and the council; but this man glories in his crime. He prevented Leo's letter to Flavian" (the acts of Ephesus say the letter to the council, v. supra) "from being read. He has presumed to excommunicate Leo. He has thrice refused to come and answer to charges. Therefore Leo, by us and the council, together with St. Peter, the rock of the church, deprives him of episcopal and sacerdotal dignity".

A letter was written to Dioscorus, announcing that he was deposed for disregarding the canons and disobeying the council. Dioscorus at first made light of the sentence, and said that he should soon be restored; the council wrote to the two emperors, reciting his misdeeds, as before, and adding that he had restored the heterodox and justly-deposed Eutyches to his office, in contempt of Leo's letter, had done injury to Eusebius, and had received to communion persons lawfully condemned. The deposition of Dioscorus was confirmed by the emperor; he was banished to Gangra in Paphlagonia, and died there in 454. Proterius, archpriest of Alexandria, who adhered to the council of Chalcedon, was placed in the see of St. Mark, but never gained the goodwill of his people as a body; they regarded Dioscorus, though de facto deposed, as their legitimate patriarch; and his deposition inaugurated the schism which to this day has divided the Christians of Egypt, the majority of whom, bearing the name of Jacobites, have always disowned the council of Chalcedon, and venerated Dioscorus as "their teacher" (Lit. Copt. St. Basil), and as a persecuted saint.

As to his theological position, there is, perhaps, little or nothing in his own words which might not be interpreted consistently with orthodoxy. Even as to his conduct, the charges brought by the Alexandrian petitioners at Chalcedon are too deeply coloured by passion to command our full belief; and a mere profligate oppressor would not have secured so largely the loyalty of Alexandrian churchmen. But his public acts in 449 exhibit the perversion of considerable abilities—of courage, resolution, clear-headedness—under the temptations of excessive power and the promptings of a tyrannous self-will. The brutal treatment of Flavian, which he practically sanctioned, in which perhaps he personally took part, has made his memory specially odious; and his name is conspicuous among the "violent men" of church history.

Ibas of Edessa c. A.D. 435–457, a Syrian by birth. His name in Syriac is Ihiba or Hiba = Donatus. He appears first as a presbyter of the church of Edessa during the episcopate of Rabbulas, and warmly espousing the theological views which his bishop uncompromisingly opposed. He was an ardent admirer of the writings of Theodore of Mopsuestia, which he translated into Syriac and diligently disseminated through the East. The famous theological school of Edessa, of which, according to some accounts, Ibas was head, and to which the Christian youth from Persia and adjacent lands resorted for education, offered great facilities for this propagation of Theodore's tenets. The growing popularity of doctrines which appeared to him decidedly heretical caused Rabbulas much alarm, and he endeavoured to get Theodore's works anathematized and burnt. The church of Edessa was generally favourable to Theodore's teaching, and Ibas was supported by the majority against their bishop. He attended the council of Ephesus in 431 as a presbyter, was cognizant of Cyril's autocratic conduct, and wrote in 433 the letter to Maris, then or subsequently bp. of Hardaschir in Persia, to which subsequent events gave celebrity. Maris had been at Edessa previous to the Nestorian controversy, and Ibas wrote this letter to tell him what had occurred since his visit. Though evidently written under great exasperation, it shows Ibas as a man of independent judgment, free from party spirit. Nestorius is severely censured in it for refusing the title Theotokos to the Virgin, and Ibas accuses Cyril of Apollinarianism, and denounces the heresy of his 12 chapters, charging him with maintaining the perfect identity of the manhood and Godhead in Christ, and denying the Catholic doctrine of the union of two Natures in One Person. Rabbulas dying in 435 or 436, a reactionary wave made Ibas his successor. This was very distasteful to those who held the strong anti-Nestorian views of their late bishop, and they speedily planned to secure his deposition, by spreading charges against him of openly preaching heretical doctrines. The accusations soon reached the ears of Theodosius II and Proclus, patriarch of Constantinople. To Proclus the matter appeared so serious that towards the close of 437 he wrote to John of Antioch, as the leading prelate of the East, though really having no canonical jurisdiction over Osrhoene, begging him to persuade Ibas, if innocent, to remove the scandal by condemning publicly certain propositions chiefly drawn from Theodore's writings against the errors of Nestorius. The same demand was made by Proclus of all the Eastern bishops; but Ibas and the bishops generally refused to condemn Theodore's propositions. Though foiled so far, the malcontents at Edessa maintained their hostile attitude to their bishop. Their leaders were four presbyters, Samuel, Cyrus, Eulogius, and Maras, acting at the instigation of one of Ibas's own suffragans, Uranius, bp. of Himeria, a pronounced Eutychian. Domnus, who had in 442 succeeded his uncle John as bp. of Antioch, visiting Hierapolis for the enthronization of the new bp. Stephen, the conspirators chose that moment for action. Cyrus and Eulogius formally laid before Domnus the accusation against Ibas, signed by about 17 clergy of Edessa, and supported by 30. Ibas, when starting for Hierapolis to pay his respects to Domnus, heard of the accusation, and at once summoned his clergy, pronounced excommunication on Cyrus and Eulogius as calumniators, threatened the same treatment to all who participated in their proceedings. No immediate step seems to have followed the presentation of the libel.

In 445 Ibas was summoned by Domnus to the synod held at Antioch in the matter of Athanasius of Perrha, but he excused himself by letter. The sympathies of Domnus inclined to Ibas, and he showed no readiness to entertain the charges brought against him. At last, in Lent 448, the four chief delators presented their indictment before Domnus and the council of the East in a manner too formal to be neglected. Domnus consequently summoned Ibas to appear before him after Easter to answer the charges.

The council was held at Antioch, and was attended by only a few bishops. The existing Acts bear only nine signatures. Ibas in person answered the 18 charges, mostly of a frivolous character and destitute of proof: e.g. that he had appropriated a jewelled chalice to his own use; that the wine at the Eucharist was inferior in quality and quantity; the malversation of sums given for the ransom of captives; simoniacal ordinations and the admission of unfit persons to the ministry and episcopate, especially his nephew Daniel, stated to be a scandalous person, whom he had made bp. of Charrae. The most weighty charges were that he had anathematized Cyril and charged him with heresy; that he was a Nestorian; and especially that at Easter 445, in the presence of his clergy, he had spoken the blasphemous words, "I do not envy Christ His becoming God, for I can become God no less than He." "This is the day that Jesus Christ became God".

The first charge he acknowledged, the others he indignantly repudiated as base slanders. Only two of the accusers appeared. Samuel and Cyrus had gone to Constantinople, in defiance of the terms on which the excommunication had been taken off, to lay their complaint before the emperor and patriarch, the favourable feeling of Domnus towards the accused being too evident for them to hope for an impartial trial. Domnus and the council declined to proceed in the absence of the chief witnesses, and the case seemed to be postponed indefinitely.

Eulogius and Maras, thereupon, hastened to join their fellow-conspirators at Constantinople, where they found a powerful party strongly hostile to the Eastern bishops, Theodoret in particular. Their faction was soon strengthened by the arrival of Uranius, the prime mover of the whole cabal, and half a dozen more Edessene clergy. The emperor and Flavian, who had succeeded Proclus as patriarch, listened to their complaints, but declined to hear them officially.

The case was remitted to the East, and by an imperial commission, dated Oct. 26, 448, Uranius of Himeria, Photius of Tyre, just elected Sept. 9, 448, on the deposition of Irenaeus, and Eustathius of Berytus were deputed to hear it, and Damascius, the tribune and secretary of state, was dispatched as imperial commissioner. The whole proceeding was manifestly illegal. It was contrary to the canons that bishops should be subjected to the judgment of other bishops, two belonging to another province, on the strength of an imperial decree. No one, however, protested. The imperial power was regarded as absolute. The tribunal also was grossly unfair. One of the three judges, Uranius, was ringleader of the movement against Ibas; the other two had obtained their sees by the instrumentality of Uranius.

Tyre was named as the place of trial. The exasperation stirred up there by the blasphemies charged against Ibas was so great that it was thought politic to remove the trial to Berytus to avoid disturbances. The court sat in the hall of Eustathius's episcopal residence. The indictment was produced by Ibas's accusers. Ibas laid before his judges a memorial signed by many of his clergy, denying that he had ever uttered the alleged blasphemies. Only three witnesses supported the accusation, and brought forward a copy of the celebrated letter to Maris.

The commissioners, avoiding any judicial decision, brought about a friendly arrangement. His enemies agreed to withdraw their accusations on Ibas promising that he would forget the past, regard his accusers as his children, and remit any fresh difficulty for settlement to Domnus; and that, to avoid suspicion of malversation, the church revenues of Edessa should be administered, like those of Antioch, by oeconomi.

Ibas gave equal satisfaction on theological points. He engaged to publicly anathematize Nestorius and all who thought with him on his return, and declared the identity of his doctrine with that agreed upon by John and Cyril, and that he accepted the decrees of Ephesus equally with those of Nicaea as due to the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. The concordat was signed, Uranius alone dissenting, Feb. 25, 449.

The truce had no elements of permanence, and a very few weeks saw it broken. The Eutychian party, resolved on the ruin of Ibas and irritated at their failure at Berytus, left no stone unturned to overthrow it. All-powerful at Constantinople through the intrigues of Chrysaphius, Dioscorus and his partisans easily obtained from the feeble emperor, indignant at the condemnation of Eutyches, an edict summoning a general council at Ephesus for Aug. 1, 449. Reports diligently spread in Edessa during his absence of Ibas's heterodoxy made his reception so unfavourable that he was obliged to leave the town and call upon the "magister militiae" for a guard to protect him. He soon discovered that all appeal to the civil power was idle; he was regarded as a public enemy to be crushed at all hazards. The count Chaereas as civil governor of Osrhoene, but with secret instructions from Constantinople emanating from Chrysaphius and Eutyches, was deputed to arrest and imprison him and reopen the suit.

When Chaereas entered Edessa, Apr. 12, 449, to commence the trial, he was met by a turbulent body of abbats and monks and their partisans, clamouring furiously for the immediate expulsion and condemnation of Ibas and his Nestorian crew. Ibas was "a second Judas," "an adversary of Christ," an "offshoot of Pharaoh." "To the fire with him and all his race".

Two days later the inquiry began in the absence of Ibas amid violent interruptions. All Edessa knew that Chaereas had come merely to ratify under the colour of judicial proceedings a sentence of condemnation already passed. Chaereas, however, was moving too slowly for their hatred, and on Sun. Apr. 17 the excitement in church was so violent that the count was compelled to promise that the verdict of the synod of Berytus should be reviewed and a new investigation commenced. This began on Apr. 18; all the old charges were reproduced by the same accusers, amid wild yells of "Ibas to the gallows, to the mines, to the circus, to exile" drowning every attempt at explanation or defence. Chaereas, as had been predetermined, addressed a report to the imperial government, declaring the charges proved; and on June 27 the emperor, acknowledging the receipt of the document, ordered that a bishop who would command the confidence of the faithful should be substituted for Ibas. Only a legally constituted synod could depose him, but meanwhile his enemies' malice could be gratified by his maltreatment. He was forbidden to enter Edessa, apprehended and treated as the vilest of criminals, dragged about from province to province, changing his quarters 40 times and being in 20 different prisons.

The council of Ephesus, so notorious for its scandalous violence, which gained for it, from Leo the Great (Ep. 95), the title of the "Gang of Robbers," opened on Aug. 3. One of its objects was to get rid finally of Ibas. This was the work of the second session, held on Aug. 22. Ibas was not cited to appear, being then in prison at Antioch. Before the witnesses were allowed to enter, the three bishops who had conducted the investigation at Tyre and Berytus were asked for an account of their proceedings. Instead of declaring the fact that, after examination made, they had acquitted Ibas, they made pitiful excuses as to their inability to arrive at the truth from the distance of the place of trial to Edessa, and endeavoured to shift the burden by saying that an investigation had subsequently been held at Edessa itself, which had received the approbation of the emperor, and that the wisest course for the council would be to inquire what was the decision there. This advice was followed. The monks of Edessa and the other parties to the indictment were admitted, and the whole of the depositions and correspondence read to the assembly. As the reading of the document ended, wild maledictions burst forth, invoking every kind of vengeance, temporal and eternal, on the head of this "second Iscariot," this "veritable Satan". "Nestorius and Ibas should be burnt alive together. The destruction of the two would be the deliverance of the world." Eulogius, the presbyter of Edessa, who had been one of the first accusers of Ibas before Domnus, followed with a summary of the proceedings from their commencement, specifying all the real or supposed crimes laid to his charge. The question of deposition was put to the council, and carried nem. con. Among those who voted for it were Eustathius of Berytus and Photius of Tyre, who had previously acquitted him on the same evidence The sentence was that he should be deposed from the episcopate and priesthood, deprived even of lay communion, and compelled to restore the money of which it was pretended he had robbed the poor. Ibas, twice acquitted, was condemned without being heard or even summoned; and no protest was raised in his favour, even by those who, a few months before, had given him their suffrage. We have no certain knowledge of what befell Ibas on his deposition. At the beginning of 451 the deposed and banished bishops were allowed to return from exile, but the question of their restoration was reserved for the fourth general council which met at Chalcedon A.D. 451.

In the 9th session, Oct. 26, the case of Ibas came before the assembled bishops. On his demand to be restored in accordance with the verdict of Photius and Eustathius at Berytus and Tyre, the Acts of that synod were read, and the next day the pope's legates gave their opinion that Ibas, being unlawfully deposed, should be at once restored. After much discussion this was carried unanimously. The legates led the way, declaring his letter to Maris orthodox, and commanding his restitution. All the prelates agreed in this verdict, the condition being that he should anathematize Nestorius and Eutyches and accept the tome of Leo. Ibas consented without any difficulty. "He had anathematized Nestorius already in his writings, and would do so again ten thousand times, together with Eutyches and all who teach the One Nature, and would accept all that the council holds as truth." On this he was unanimously absolved, restored to his episcopal dignity, and voted as bp. of Edessa at the subsequent sessions. Nonnus, who had been chosen bishop on his deposition, being legitimately ordained, was allowed to retain his episcopal rank, and on Ibas's death, Oct. 28, 457, quietly succeeded him as metropolitan.

The fiction that Ibas had disowned the letter to Maris at Chalcedon, as he was asserted by Justinian to have done before at Berytus, as having been forged in his name; is thoroughly disproved by Facundus. A controversy concerning his letter to Maris arose in the next century, in the notorious dispute about the "Three Articles," when the letter was branded as heterodox (together with the works of Theodore of Mopsuestia and Theodoret's writings in favour of Nestorius) in the edict of Justinian, and was formally condemned in 553 by the fifth general council, which pronounced an anathema, in bold defiance of historical fact, against all who should pretend that it and the other
documents impugned had been recognized as orthodox by the council of Chalcedon. Ibas is anathematized by the Jacobites as a Nestorian.

According to the Chronicle of Edessa, Ibas, during his episcopate, erected the new church of the Apostles at Edessa, to which a senator gave a silver table of 720 lb. weight, and Anatolius, praefectus militum, a silver coffer to receive the relics of St. Thomas the Apostle, who was said, after preaching in Parthia, to have been buried there.

Ibas was a translator and disseminator of the writings of others rather than an original author. His translations of the theological works of Theodore of Mopsuestia, Diodorus of Tarsus, Theodoret, and Nestorius, were actively spread through Syria, Persia, and the East, and were very influential in fostering the Nestorian tenets which have, even to the present day, characterized the Christians of those regions. His influence was permanent in the celebrated theological school of Edessa, in spite of the efforts of Nonnus to eradicate it, until its final overthrow and the banishment of its teachers to Persia.

 

 

Theodoretus, bp. of Cyrrhus, or Cyrus, in the province of Euphratensis, was born at Antioch probably c. 393. His parents held a high position at Antioch. His maternal grandmother was a lady of landed property. His writings indicate a well-trained and highly cultivated mind, enriched by complete familiarity with the best classical authors. But his chief study was given to the Holy Scriptures and the commentators upon them in several languages. He was master of Greek, Syriac, and Hebrew, but unacquainted with Latin. His chief theological teacher, to whom be never refers without deserved reverence and admiration, was Theodore of Mopsuestia, "the great commentator," as he was called, the luminary and pride of the Antiochene school, but one who undoubtedly prepared the way for the teaching of Nestorius by his desire to provide, in Dorner's words, "for a free moral development in the Saviour's manhood". Theodoret speaks also of Diodorus of Tarsus as his teacher, but this can only have been through his writings.

The parents of Theodoret were both dead when he was 23 years old. Being their sole heir, he immediately proceeded to distribute his inheritance among the poor, taking up his abode in a monastery, one of two founded in a large village called Nicerte, 3 miles from Apamea, and about 75 from Antioch.

After some 7 years in the Apamean monastery, he was drawn to assume the cares of the episcopate. Of the circumstances of his consecration we are entirely ignorant. The see was that of Cyrus, or more properly Cyrrhus, the chief city of a district of the province of Euphratensis, called after it Cyrrhestica, an extensive fertile plain between the spurs of the Amanus and the river Euphrates, intersected by mountain ranges. His diocese was 40 miles square, and contained 800 distinct parishes, each with its church. It was singularly rich in monastic houses for both sexes, some of them containing as many as 250 inmates, and it boasted of a large number of solitaries. All of these enjoyed Theodoret's unremitting and affectionate solicitude and frequent visits.

Cyrrhus was equally fertile in heretics. The East has ever been the nursery of heresy. Lying, as it were, in a corner of the world, not reached by the public posts, isolated by the great river to the East and the mountain chains to the West, peopled by half-leavened heathen, Christianity there assumed many strange forms, sometimes hardly recognizable caricatures of the truth. Eunomians, Arians, Marcionites, and others who still more wildly distorted the pure faith abounded. To the recovery of these Theodoret devoted his youthful ardour and still undiminished strength, at personal risk. "often," he writes, "have I shed my blood; often have I been stoned; nay, brought down before my time to the very gates of death." Nor were his labours fruitless. Eight villages polluted by Marcionite errors, with their neighbouring hamlets comprising more than a thousand souls, one village filled with Eunomians, another with Arians, were brought back to the sound faith. He could boast with all honesty to pope Leo I in 449 that by the help of his prayers not a single plant of tares was left among them, and that his whole flock had been delivered from heretical errors.

He carried his campaign against error, which embraced Jews and heathen as well as misbelieving Christians, beyond his own diocese. He was unwearied in preaching, and his acquaintance with the Syrian vernacular enabled him to reach the poorest and most ignorant. His care for the temporal interests and material prosperity of his diocese was no less remarkable.

The city of Cyrrhus, though the winter quarters of the tenth legion, could boast little dignity or architectural beauty. He calls it "a small and desolate city," with but "few inhabitants, and those poor," whose ugliness he had striven to redeem by costly buildings erected at his own expense. From his own ecclesiastical revenues—which cannot have been small—he erected public porticos, two large bridges, and public baths, and, finding the city without any regular water-supply, constructed an aqueduct, and by a catchwater drain guarded the city against inundation from the marshes. These works attracted architects and engineers to the city, and afforded remunerative employment to many people, for whose benefit he secured the help of presbyters skilled in medical science.

Finding that the severity of the state imposts caused many to throw up their farms, leaving the civil authorities to make good their deficiency, a liability they were seeking to avoid by flight, he wrote to the empress Pulcheria, entreating her to lighten so intolerable a burden, as well as to the patrician Anatolius.

With considerable trouble he obtained from Palestine relics of prophets, apostles, and martyrs, for the greater glory of a church he had built. So great was his zeal for orthodoxy that, having discovered in the churches of his diocese more than 200 copies of the Diatessaron of Tatian, which he regarded as tainted with heresy, he destroyed them all, and substituted the ordinary text of the four Gospels.

His life as bishop differed as little as possible from that he had lived in his monastery. State and official routine were very distasteful to him, and he avoided them as far as possible, devoting himself to the spiritual side of his office.

The critical period in the life of Theodoret was in connexion with the Nestorian controversy, through which he is chiefly known to us. His personal share in it began towards the end of 430, with the receipt by John, the patriarch of Antioch, of the letters of Celestine and Cyril, relative to the condemnation of the doctrines of Nestorius obtained by the Western bishops in Aug. 429. The high-handed behaviour of the patriarchs of Rome and Alexandria towards the bp. of the new Rome, a personal friend of long standing to both of them, was no less offensive to Theodoret than to John. When these documents arrived, Theodoret was at Antioch with other bishops of the province. The admirable letter despatched in the name of John and his suffragans to Nestorius, exhorting him to give up his objections to the term "Theotokos," seeing that its true sense was part of the Church's faith, and entreating him not to throw the whole of Christendom into confusion for the sake of a word, has been with great show of probability ascribed to the practised pen of Theodoret. The controversy was speedily rendered much fiercer by the publication of Cyril's celebrated twelve "Anathematisms" or "Articles." Designed to crush one form of heretical teaching as regards our Lord's personal nature, these "articles" (detached, against Cyril's intention, from the letter on which they were based) hardly escaped falling into the opposite error. The Godhead of Christ was asserted with such emphasis that to some readers His manhood might seem obscured. John was shocked at what he deemed the positive affinity to Apollinarian doctrine of some of these articles, and applied first to Andreas of Samosata and then to Theodoret to confute them. Theodoret readily replied to the anathematisms seriatim. So completely at variance with orthodoxy did he regard them, that in the letter to John prefixed to his observations upon them, he expresses a suspicion that some "enemies of the truth" had been sheltering themselves under Cyril's name.

The documents were prior to the council of Ephesus and to the formal condemnation of Nestorius then passed. At that gathering Theodoret, accompanying his metropolitan, Alexander of Hierapolis, was among the earlier comers, anticipating the Oriental brethren, whose arrival he, with 68 bishops, vainly urged should be waited for before the council opened. On the arrival of John and his Oriental brethren, Theodoret at once united himself to them, and gave his voice for the deposition and excommunication of Cyril, Memnon, and their adherents. He took part also in the proceedings which ensued, when the "concilium" and the "conciliabulum" launched thunderbolts against each other, deposing and excommunicating. Theodoret was one of the Oriental commissioners to the emperor Theodosius II at Constantinople, representing his metropolitan Alexander. The deputies not being allowed to enter Constantinople, audiences with the emperor were held at Chalcedon, Sept. 431. Theodoret's name appears in the letters and other documents passing between the Oriental party at Ephesus and their representatives in Chalcedon, in which much was said and written in a bitter spirit.

Of the five sessions held at Chalcedon the proceedings of the first alone are recorded. We have also a few scanty fragments of speeches and homilies of Theodoret at this period, characterized by distressing acrimony, and a letter of his to Alexander of Hierapolis, whom he was representing, informing him how matters were going on at Chalcedon, telling him of the popularity of the deputies with the people, who, in spite of the hostility of the clergy and monks by whom they had been repeatedly stoned, flocked to hear them, assembling in a large court surrounded with porticos, the churches being closed against them; but Theodoret laments their ill-success with the emperor.

Before the deputies finally left Chalcedon, the Orientals delivered addresses to the adherents of the deposed Nestorius who had crossed the Bosphorus from Constantinople. The first of these was by Theodoret. He and his companions, he said, were shut out from the royal city on account of their fidelity to Christ, but the Heavenly Jerusalem was still open to them. On their way home from Ephesus the Orientals, Theodoret among them, held a synod
at Tarsus and renewed the sentence of deposition on Cyril in conjunction with the seven orthodox deputies to Theodosius II, which they published in a circular letter. They engaged also never to abandon Nestorius. Theodoret returned to his diocese, and devoted himself to composing a fresh work assailing the obnoxious anathematisms, entitled Pentalogus, from its division into five books. Only a few fragments remain. Other treatises he wrote then are lost. But we have, in a Latin version, a long letter addressed to the followers of Nestorius at Constantinople, declaring his adherence to the orthodox faith, although he had felt unable to acquiesce in the condemnation of Nestorius, not believing that the doctrines ascribed to him were actually held by him.

Cyril found it impossible to accept the terms proposed in Theodoret's articles. He explained his objections in a long letter to Acacius, which, however, opened a way for pacification by interpretations of some questionable points in his anathematisms which he refused to withdraw. This letter Theodoret regarded as orthodox, but irreconcilable with the anathematisms, which he still regarded as heretical. He was, however, precluded from accepting the terms of peace which John and others were increasingly inclined to acquiesce in, by the demand that he should anathematize the doctrine of Nestorius and Nestorius himself. To do this (Theodoret writes to his friend Andrew of Samosata) would be to anathematize godliness itself. He is ready to anathematize all who assert that Christ was mere man, or who divide Him into two Sons, or who deny His Godhead. But if they anathematized a man of whom they were not the judges, and his doctrine which they knew to be sound, en bloc, "indeterminate," they would act impiously.

At this epoch, as Hefele remarks, the Orientals were divided into two great parties: the peace-seeking majority, with John of Antioch and the venerable Acacius at their head, ready to meet Cyril half-way; the violent party of irreconcilables, with Alexander of Hierapolis as their leader, opposed to all reconciliation as treason to the truth; while a third or middle party was led by Theodoret and Andrew of Samosata, anxious for peace, but on terms of their own. Theodoret and his scanty band of adherents failed to secure the confidence of either of the two great parties. His inflexible metropolitan, Alexander, vehemently denounced as treason to the truth any approach to reconciliation with Cyril. Against this reproach and against the suspicion that he had given in to escape persecution or to secure a higher place Theodoret sought to defend himself. Though still holding back from reconciliation with Cyril, he was virtually the means of bringing about the long-desired peace. The declaration of faith presented to Cyril by Paul of Emesa, as representing the belief of John, and accepted by Cyril, had been originally drawn up by Theodoret at Ephesus. The paragraphs directed against Cyril's twelve articles were slightly modified, but the main body was unaltered.

The reconciliation, however, was by no means acceptable to Theodoret. For it demanded acceptance of the deposition of Nestorius, the anathematizing of Nestorius's doctrines, and the giving up the four metropolitans of his party who had been deposed at Constantinople. Theodoret's protest was in vain. Theodosius insisted on the deposition and expulsion of all bishops who continued opposed to union. Finding his growing
isolation more and more intolerable, Theodoret invited the chiefs of the fast-lessening band of his sympathizers, Alexander, Andrew, and others, to take counsel at Zeugma, in reference to the union with Cyril, which had been accepted by John and earnestly pressed upon them by the combined weight of the ecclesiastical and civil power. Alexander refused to attend the synod except on his own terms. The bishops who met, as Theodoret informed John, accepted the orthodoxy of Cyril's letter and regarded it as a recantation of his obnoxious twelve articles, but would not pronounce an anathema on Nestorius. John, now hopeless of peace otherwise, applied to the secular power. His method proved generally effectual. One by one the recalcitrant prelates yielded, except Alexander and some others. Theodoret was one of the last to yield. The coldness arising between him and John after John's reconciliation with Cyril had been much increased by John's uncanonical intrusion into the province of Alexander in the ordination of bishops. Theodoret, with the other bishops of the province, on this, withdrew from communion with him, and published a synodical letter charging him with ordaining unworthy persons.

Long and painful controversy ensued, only crushed at last by John's appealing to the imperial power. All eventually yielded to combined entreaties and menaces save Alexander and a small band of irreconcilables, who were banished from their sees. Theodoret was assailed on his tenderest side by harassing his diocese. The unhappy renewal of strife, concerning the doctrines of Diodorus and Theodoret, brought Theodoret and Cyril once more into collision. The long and bitter controversy, in which both parties did and said many regrettable things; was closed by the death of Cyril, June 9 or 27, 444.

The succession of Dioscorus to Cyril's patriarchal throne led to fresh trials for Theodoret. Dioscorus was resolved to bring about Theodoret's overthrow, as Theodoret was one of the first to discern the nascent heresy of Eutyches, and directed the powers of a well-trained intellect and great theological learning to exposing it. The ear of the emperor was gained, and Theodoret was represented as a turbulent busybody, constantly at Antioch and other cities, taking part in councils and assemblies instead of attending to his diocese; a troublesome agitator, stirring up strife wherever he moved. He was also accused on theological grounds. Dioscorus, who seems to have regarded himself as "the lawful inheritor of Cyril's guardianship of anti-Nestorian orthodoxy," wrote to Theodoret's patriarch, Domnus, who c. 442 had succeeded his uncle John in the see of Antioch, informing him that Theodoret was creating a crypto-Nestorian party, practically teaching Nestorianism under another name and striking at "the one Nature of the Incarnate." These accusations were accepted at court, and Dioscorus obtained an imperial edict (dated Mar. 30, 449) that as a disturber of the peace of the church Theodoret should keep to his own diocese. Theodoret submitted, leaving the city without bidding his friends farewell.

From the "Latrocinium" or "Robbers' Synod," at Ephesus (449), Theodoret was excluded by an imperial edict of Mar. 4, unless summoned unanimously by the council itself (Labbe, iv. 100). Theodoret's condemnation was evidently the chief purpose in summoning this infamous synod. From his "internement" at Cyrrhus Theodoret calmly watched his enemies' proceedings. He had not long to wait for the confirmation of his worst fears. Dioscorus and his partisans, having by brutal violence obtained the acquittal of Eutyches and the deposition of Flavian, Ibas, Irenaeus, and other sympathizers with Theodoret, proceeded on the third session to deal with him. The indictment was formulated by a presbyter of Antioch named Pelagius, who, in language of the most atrocious violence, proceeded to demand of the council to take the sword of God and, as Samuel dealt with Agag, and Elijah with the priests of Baal, pitilessly destroy those who had introduced strange doctrines into the church. Those who adhered to the poisonous teachings of Nestorius deserved the flames. "Burn them!—burn them!" he cried. Pelagius was allowed to lay before the synod the proofs of his accusation, contained in "The Apology of Theodoret, bp. of Cyrrhus, in behalf of Diodorus and Theodorus, champions of God." The council exclaimed that they had heard enough to warrant the immediate deposition of Theodoret, as the emperor had already ordered. The unanimous sentence was that he should be deposed from the priesthood and deprived of even lay communion. His books were to be committed to the flames.

Dioscorus was now master of the whole Eastern church; "il règne partout." Theodoret knew that deposition was usually followed by exile, and prepared for the worst. He was allowed to retire to his monastery near Apamea. An appeal to the West, forbidden him in person by Theodosius, was now prosecuted by letter, which, though addressed to Leo individually, was really meant for the bishops of the West assembled in the synod, to which he begs his cause may be submitted. "In this remarkable letter," writes Dr. Bright "he traces the primacy of Rome to her civil greatness, her soundness of faith, and her possession of the graves of the apostles Peter and Paul. He eulogizes the exact and comprehensive orthodoxy with which the Tome of Leo conveys the full mind of the Holy Spirit." He entreats Leo "to decide whether he ought to submit to the recent sentence. He awaits his decision. He will acquiesce in it, whatever it be, committing himself to the judgment of his God and Saviour."

Theodosius continued to pay no heed to the remonstrances of Leo, asserting that everything had been decided at Ephesus with complete freedom and in accordance with the truth, and that the prelates there deposed merited their fate for innovations in the faith. The interposition of Pulcheria and of the Western princesses was employed in vain.

On July 29, 450, Theodosius II was killed by a fall from his horse, and the imperial dignity passed to the resolute hands of the orthodox Pulcheria and her soldier-husband Marcian. All was now changed. Eutychianism became the losing cause, and the orthodox sufferers were speedily recalled. Theodoret appears to have been mentioned by name in the edict of recall. The stigma of heterodoxy was speedily removed from him. There is no reason to doubt that he was one of the bishops who signed the Tome of Leo, prefixing a short résumé of his own faith regarding the Incarnation, and that on this Leo recognized him as a Catholic bishop.

Though now at liberty to go where he pleased, Theodoret preferred to remain in his monastery. His chief desire was to witness the complete triumph of truth, and to convince others of the purity of his own teaching. This desire he saw in part fulfilled. But for his complete satisfaction an oecumenical council was necessary, and to bring that about he laboured with all his might.

The council of Chalcedon met on Oct. 8, 451. Theodoret's entrance was the signal for outrageous violence on the part of the adherents of Dioscorus. The hall re-echoed with cries and counter-cries which interrupted all proceedings. Theodoret sat down "in the midst," not among his brother-bishops. He continued to attend the sessions of the council, but without voting, and taking no part in the deposition of Dioscorus. His own cause came on at the eighth session, Oct. 26. Although his orthodoxy had been acknowledged by Leo and his restoration required by the emperor, the anti-Nestorian section would not hear of his recognition as a bishop until he had in express terms anathematized Nestorius. This step he had repeatedly declared he would never take, and he now tried to satisfy the remonstrants with something short of it, but in vain. Wearied out, at last he yielded to their clamour and pronounced the test words, "Anathema to Nestorius, and to every one who denies that the Holy Virgin Mary is the mother of God, and who divides the one Son, the Only-begotten, into two Sons."

The imperial commissioners now declared that all doubt had been removed and that Theodoret should now receive back his bishopric. The whole assembly raised the cry that Theodoret was worthy of his throne, and that the church must receive back her orthodox teacher. The leading bishops voted for his restoration, the rest signified their assent by acclamation, and the commissioners gave sentence that by the decree of the holy council Theodoret should receive again the church of Cyrrhus.

But few years remained to Theodoret, and of these very little is known. It is not even certain whether he returned to his episcopal duties at Cyrrhus or remained in the quiet Apamean monastery, devoting himself to literary labours. Tillemont thinks that he probably did not live beyond 453. But if the statement of Gennadius be true, that his death took place under the emperor Leo, he must have lived till 457 or 458.

His writings may be divided roughly into

I. Exegetical, on the Scriptures of O. and N. T.

II. Controversial, dealing with the anathematisms of Cyril, the Eutychian heresy, and, in a work written towards the end of his life, with heresies in general.

III. Theological, including the Graecarum affectionum Curatio, Orations on Divine Providence, and sundry orations and lesser treatises.

IV.
Historical, and

V. Epistolary.

 

I. Exegetical.—These include works on (1) the Octateuch, (2) the books of Sam., Kings, and Chron., (3) the Pss., (4) the Canticles, (5) the Major Prophets, (6) the Twelve Minor Prophets, (7) the Fourteen Epistles of St. Paul, including that to the Hebrews. The work on the Octateuch consists of answers to difficult points, for the most part characterized by the sound common-sense literalism of the Antiochene school, with but little tendency to allegory. He often, instead of his own opinion, cites that of his great masters Diodorus of Tarsus and Theodore of Mopsuestia, and Origen. In Leviticus and Numbers he naturally adopts more of the allegorical method, regarding the whole Levitical ritual and the moral ordinances as typical of the sacrificial and mediatorial work of Christ, and of the new law He came to inaugurate. The commentary on the Canticles was his earliest exegetical work. He controverts the opinion that this book contains the story of the earthly loves of Solomon either with Pharaoh's daughter or with Abishag, or that it is a political allegory, in which the bridegroom represents the monarch and the bride the people, and adopts the spiritual interpretation by which the bridegroom stands for Jesus Christ and the bride for the church. From one passage in the very interesting prologue we learn that Theodoret held the then current opinion, that the whole of the O.T. books having been burnt under Manasseh and other godless kings, or destroyed during the Captivity, Ezra was divinely inspired to rewrite them word for word on the return from the Captivity. He denounces the iniquity of the Jews, who had excluded Daniel from the prophets and placed his book among the Hagiographa, because no prophet had so clearly predicted the advent of Jesus Christ, and the very time of His appearance. The only portions of the N.T. commented on by him are the Epistles of St. Paul, including that to the Hebrews. Of these bp. Lightfoot writes, "His commentaries on St. Paul are superior to his other exegetical writings, and have been assigned the palm over all patristic expositions of Scripture. For appreciation, terseness, and good sense they are perhaps unsurpassed, and if the absence of faults were a just standard of merit, they would deserve the first place; but they have little claim to originality, and he who has read Chrysostom and Theodore of Mopsuestia will find scarcely anything in Theodoret which he has not seen before. It is right to add, however, that Theodoret himself modestly disclaims any such merit. In his preface he apologizes for attempting to interpret St. Paul after two such men who are 'luminaries of the world,' and he professes nothing more than to gather his stores 'from the blessed Fathers."').

 

II. Controversial.—(1) The Refutation of the Twelve Anathematisms of Cyril. (2) Eranistes or Polymorphus, "a work of remarkable interest and of permanent value for theological students, to be read in connexion with the Tome of Leo and the definitions of Chalcedon". It consists of three dialogues between the "Mendicant" represents Eutychianism, and Theodoret himself. Their respective titles indicate the line adopted in each. These are Immutabilis, Inconfusus, and Impatibilis.

Haereticarum Fabularum Compendium, a work directed against heresies in general, in five books. The fourth book, the most important as treating of matters with which he was more or less personally acquainted, begins with the heresies of Arius and Eunomius and comes down to those of Nestorius and Eutyches. His disgracefully violent language with regard to his former friend Nestorius—whom he stigmatizes as an instrument of Satan, a man who by his pride had plunged the church into disorders, and under the cloak of orthodoxy introduced the denial of the Divinity and of the Incarnation of the Only-begotten Son, and who at last met with the punishment he deserved, a sign of his future punishment—would warrant the charitable hope that this chapter has been erroneously ascribed to Theodoret. Of this, however, there is no evidence, and we are, though most reluctantly, compelled to accept it as his work, together with the equally atrocious letter to Sporacius on the Nestorian heresy. It is accepted by Photius and Leontius of Byzantius.

 

III. Theological.—The chief is an apologetic treatise, intended to exhibit the confirmations of the truth of the Christian faith contained in the philosophical systems of the Gentiles, under the title Graecarum Affectionum Curatio, seu Evangelicae Veritatis ex Gentilium Philosophia Cognitio. It is in 12 discourses, and furnishes a very able and eloquent defence of Christianity against the ridicule and ignorant accusations of pagan philosophers, written probably before 437. It was followed by another of a similar character, in ten orations, on Divine Providence, regarded by the best critics as exhibiting Theodoret's literary power in its highest form, as regards the careful selection of thoughts, nobility of language, elegance and purity of style, and the force and sequence of his arguments. To these may be added a discourse on Charity, and some fragments of sermons, etc.

 

IV. Historical.—This class contains two works of very different character and of very different value: (1) the Ecclesiastical History, and (2) the Religious History. (1) The former, in five books, was intended to form a continuation of that of Eusebius. It commences with the rise of Arianism under Constantius and closes with the death of Theodore of Mopsuestia, A.D. 429. From his opening words he has been thought to have had in view the histories of Socrates and Sozomen, and to have written to supply their omissions and correct their mistakes (Valesius). This is questioned by some, and must be regarded as doubtful. He gives more original documents than either of his brother-historians, but is very chary of dates, and writes generally without sufficient chronological exactness. Photius finds fault with his too great fondness for metaphor, while he praises his style as "clear, lofty, and free from redundancy". The history is learned and generally impartial, "though it is occasionally one-sided and runs off into a theological treatise."

(2) The Religious History, is devoted to the lives of 30 celebrated hermits and ascetics, his contemporaries, and was written from personal knowledge and popular report before his Ecclesiastical History. It excites our wonder at what Dr. Newman calls the "easy credence, or as moderns would say large credulousness," which appears more astonishing as he had been brought up in the most matter-of-fact, prosaic, and critical school of ancient Christendom. "What," writes Dr. Newman, "made him drink in with such relish what we reject with such disgust? Was it that, at least, some miracles were brought home so absolutely to his sensible experience that he had no reason for doubting the others which came to him second-hand? This certainly will explain what to most of us is sure to seem the stupid credulity of so well-read, so intellectual an author". The whole subject presents a very curious intellectual problem.

 

V. Epistolary.—No portion of Theodoret's literary remains exceeds in interest and value the large collection of his letters. As throwing light on his personal history and character, and as helping us to understand the perplexed relations of the principal actors in that stormy period of theological strife and their various shades of theological opinion, their importance cannot be over-estimated. They give us a heightened esteem of Theodoret himself, his intellectual power, theological precision, warm-hearted affection, and Christian virtues.

The Auctarium of Garnier also contains the following: (1) Prolegomena and Extracts of Commentaries on the Psalms, probably derived from Catenae. (2) A Short Extract from a Commentary on St. Luke. (3) Sermon on the Nativity of S. John Baptist. (4) Homily spoken at Chalcedon in 431. (5) Fifteen additional letters of Theodoret. (6) Seven dialogues composed a little before the council of Ephesus, 2 each against Anomoeans and Apollinarians, and 3 against Macedonians. Their authorship is doubtful; they have been ascribed to Athanasius or Maximus, but Garnier claims them for Theodoret.